Lower Sunbury Traditional Cache

An easy cache in Sunbury Park with room for TB's and swaps. Please rehide well with the camouflage that has been made available

History of Sunbury Park.

In 1851 the Arden family acquired the site and built a large double winged house with 40 bedrooms and a ballroom. During the Great War, it was used as an officer’s mess. After that, the family didn’t actually live in it again. A Sunbury resident (who was born in 1918) remembers playing in the dilapidated house as a child, having climbed over the wall on Thames Street with friends.

He remembers flaking plaster coving, rotting floor boards and a large spiral staircase. It must have been very grand at one point but during WW2 its only use was by the fire brigade for practice.

In the late 1930’s the park was also the site of the annual Sunbury Fair, where local teams from the Gas Works and the Fire Brigade played ‘push ball’. This is game using a ball 6 feet (1.83 m) in diameter and 50 lb (22.7 kg) in weight. Two teams push it towards a goal. The Fire Brigade also put on demonstrations of their hose skills.

If you walk through the park and lose your footing, it may be in one of the bomb craters, as bombs fell from The Avenue all the way to the river in WW2.

The ‘Arden’ House was finally pulled down in 1946. In 1975, Sunbury Park was bought from private ownership and made available for public use.

Now cows graze the land there in a bid to improve biodiversity and control invasive grassland species

Happy hunting